Eliezer does a good job of explaining a mechanism by which two investments with negatively correlated returns can switch to having positively correlated returns. But he doesn't do a good job of convincing me that a stock's price has a tendency to go down when it has just gone up, and vice versa.
I can think of an argument against this position. It seems plausible that stock traders see the past movement of a stock as an indicator of it's future movement. If a majority of traders share this belief, this will compel them to buy the stock from those who don't, inflating it's value and reinforcing the cycle. This would indicate that markets are inductive, which is the opposite of what the title suggests.
Paolo Freire said, "Washing one's hands of the conflict between the powerful and the powerless means to side with the powerful, not to be neutral."
If the outcome of their conflict is not being affected by your existence, it can be said that you are neutral. If you disagree with me, I would be interested to hear what definition of "neutral" you are using.
To a degree, it is useful to value truth over happiness in each of the occupations you mention. But humans have the ability to restrict their critical analysis to certain domains. Allow me to rewrite my comment:
As a firm atheist, I am fully open to the possibility that much of the world should stay religious, unless they're doing some sort of important work that's tangentially related to the question of God's existence (like studying humanity's origins), or they are doing some sort of work that requires them to make sure they don't compartmentalize their critical analysis.
@billswift:
The obviously religious ones like Abigail and Richard aren't really worth responding to except with general disdain.
Unless you care about atheism's reputation.
The fact is that religious belief, if fully attained, can be an enormously useful psychological crutch. As a firm atheist, I am fully open to the possibility that much of the world should stay religious, unless they're doing some sort of important work that necessitates them to value truth over happiness.
And if you decide that someone would be better off as an atheist, you shouldn't try to grab their psychological crutch all at once. They'll just grip tighter.
Knowing the name of my representative (Mike Honda btw) is not going to increase my political influence. I'd have to be chummy with him before he gave any serious weight to my opinion. All the congressman's question revealed was whether the people in his audience gave any thought to politics, not whether they could be effective politically if they tried.
As for voting, I see it as a waste of time to study issues which I have only a tiny probability of affecting. The best strategy I can see in this situation is to ask your most intelligent and unbiased fri...
Here's a link to the Yahoo Yellow Pages with various types of restaurants near Montgomery Theater.
Does anyone who reads Overcoming Bias live in San Jose? If so, can you recommend a restaurant?
A man with one watch knows what time it is; a man with two watches is never sure.
This is related to something I've been thinking about lately. You may or may not be familiar with the concept of significant figures. In a nutshell, they're a way of communicating the precision of a measurement using the number of digits written. This seems to be a pretty good explanation.
Let's say we are building a robot scientist. The robot scientist has no need for significant figures; those are for puny humans. Instead, it stores measurement and uncertainty separate...
This business with nuclear retaliation reminds me of a game we played in microeconomics class. The game goes something like this: Person 1 starts with $10 and offers another Person 2 $A of that amount. Person 2 can choose to accept or reject. If the deal is accepted, Person 2 receives $A and Person 1 receives $10 - A. If the deal is rejected, neither party receives anything.
As far as I can tell, it's never rational to release a nuclear bomb. And it's never rational to reject money in aforementioned game. But in both situations, it is advantageous to ...
How are you and Robin going to decide whether a post is more appropriate for Less Wrong or Overcoming Bias?